Catching Up

I just looked at my list of books read this year and realized how many there are for which I haven't written posts. It isn't that I didn't like them enough to write about them, in fact I usually have a lot more to say about books I didn't like than those I did. It's just been a busy year. My mother's health and hospitalizations were the focus of my time and energy earlier in the year, then my son got married this summer and you mothers know what "wedding year" is like. My own health has limited what I can do and how much energy I have to do it, leaving me at times without two words to put together.

I was going to leave the books listed without posts, but some of the them were so good I want to say something about them so others can discover them too. Others aren't really worth mentioning so I'll just say I didn't like them.


Papua, New Guinea/Melody Carlson
I'm not a fan of this author. I've tried but
find her books trite and shallow. I didn't
like this one any more than the others,
and after reading it have decided not
to bother with any more.

Gilead/Marilynne Robinson 

This was a re-read for book 

club that I wrote about here.  

It's a Pulitzer Prize winner
and a wonderful book.

A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar
Suzanne Joinson
This was one step above the Carlson
book, but that's all. I didn't like it.

Einstein - His Life and Universe/Walter Isaacson 

I enjoyed this one. Einstein was an interesting man. I didn't know anything about his personal or professional lives so it was an eye-opener for me. I am fascinated by science, but this is complicated stuff and I had to read and re-read a number of pages to follow the theories the author was explaining. He was able to make Einstein's work come alive for me though; it was just my poor brain that had some trouble keeping up.

Bellman and Black/Diane Setterfield

Disappointing. I loved "The Thirteenth Tale"

but for me this one fell flat. It was a bit on

the weird side, which can go either way for

me. Sometimes weird is "oh, this is really

interesting..." but this one was "oh,

this is not interesting at all...".

Gifts from Eykis

Dr. Wayne Dyer 

I didn't finish it. 

Boring. Silly, even.

The Pearl/John Steinbeck

There are so many great classics that I have never read and really don't know why. This is another one that I loved when I finally got around to reading it. Loved the characters, the story, the moral and the writing. It's a little book and won't take much of your time, so if you haven't read it you really should give it a try. 

People of theBook/GeraldineBrooks

A re-read that I first read several years ago. I remember loving it the first time, maybe a little less this time. It's the story of a Hebrew manuscript called the "Sarajevo Haggadah" and how it survived through five centuries of wars, book burnings and various other destructive forces. A modern day rare-book expert is given the task of analyzing and conserving the book and in doing that discovers it's history. I loved the historical aspects of it and the fact that it's a book about a book.

How To Read Novels Like A Professor/Thomas C. Foster Brilliant. This book was so much fun to read. If the title sounds dry to you, don't pay any attention to it; Foster is easy to read, funny and fascinating. If you love novels, but like me have had no literary education, this is the book you want to read. It's loaded with helpful information that will show you how to get more out of the novels you're reading. It's one I'll read again and again.

Elizabeth, the Queen

 Sally Bedell Smith 

This was a re-read
for book club.

I wrote about it here.

Loved it.

Eight Cousins/Louisa May Alcott - When I get tired of news about wars and crime and people doing horrible things to other people, I read Louisa May Alcott. This book, like all of her books, is about good people in a gentle time doing ordinary things. They may not be very much like real life, but that's exactly what makes them so appealing. Like balm on a wound. 

That's it. Hopefully I'll get posts done on the rest of the books I read this year.